Untangled
by Ceiphied Knight
Summary: A series of drabbles and short stories revolving around Rapunzel and Eugene.  Rated for future additions.
1. The Proposal

**THE PROPOSAL**

* * *

Rapunzel ran a brush through her short brown hair and straightened the heavy jeweled crown atop her head. It seemed to sit slightly crooked no matter what she did, so she finally shoved it once more with gusto and gave up on it for the day.

Crown: 276

Rapunzel: 0

Luckily, she still had plenty of time to become a proper princess.

Leaning forward into her mirror, the princess ran one last quick check to make sure she looked otherwise acceptable. Big green eyes looked back at her.

Sometimes she wondered if her eyes looked any wiser than they had when she was first reunited with her parents and her kingdom two years prior. Here she was, on the eve of her twentieth birthday, and so much had changed.

She had been eighteen the first time she'd ventured from the tower where she had, until that moment, spent her entire life. Many young women were married by eighteen, but Rapunzel had never so much as set foot on the ground before. Not until _he _had waltzed in.

Rapunzel smiled to herself.

Pushing herself away from her vanity, she shifted her focus to getting changed for dinner. There would be plenty of time for nostalgia and walks down memory lane. After all, the man she was thinking of would be there to pick her up at any moment.

Sure enough, she had just slipped on her shoes (bothersome, uncomfortable things) when there was a knock on her chamber door.

"Your Highness?" Came a soft female voice from the hallway. "Your gentleman is here to fetch you."

Rapunzel opened the door with a grin.

"Gentleman?" She said, feigning confusion. She spoke loud enough that she knew he would hear her from the bottom of the stairs. "That's strange, I could have sworn Eugene was coming to get me. Oh, well, tell this gentleman I'll be right down."

Then she closed the door and snickered, utterly pleased with herself.

As expected, moments later there was another knock.

"Excuse me, princess, I'm here to pick up some brat I found in the woods a couple years ago. Could you please let her know I'm here?"

Laughing, Rapunzel flung the door open and flew into the arms of her boyfriend.

Eugene Fitzherbert, once a thief known as Flynn Rider, tightened his arms around the petite girl. One hand reached up to run fingers through short, silky brunette locks, and he was reminded once again that he'd been the one to cut her hair in the first place; two years ago almost to the day.

His other hand hooked under her chin and gently tilted her face up for a kiss.

They often lost track of time while kissing, and it wasn't until they heard a man casually clear his throat that they jumped apart.

"Oh, daddy!" Rapunzel gasped, blushing a bit. "I didn't see you there."

"Obviously," the King said, smiling.

Eugene looked a bit sheepish, but gave a small bow to the girl's father and said, "Your Highness, I'll be taking Rapunzel into town tonight, if that's all right."

The King nodded. "Of course! It's a big night for you, isn't it? The anniversary of when you two met?"

"Yes," Eugene said, emphatically, taking Rapunzel's hand. "I got us reservations at a very nice restaurant to celebrate."

The King walked over and gave Rapunzel a kiss on top of her head while quietly saying, "then you mustn't be late."

With that, he continued on down the hallway and disappeared.

"That was strange," Rapunzel commented. "He's usually much more talkative."

"Well, you know how old guys can be!" Eugene exclaimed, pulling Rapunzel by the hand and down the stairs.

"Um...not really, how can old guys be...?"

"Oh, look, Max is waiting!" Eugene interrupted.

Sure enough, standing right outside the palace doors was Maximus, a large white steed they had befriended when they first met. Max was a better tracker than any bloodhound, and loved Rapunzel very much. He tolerated Eugene.

Rapunzel reached up to pet the horse on his nose, and Max whinnied in delight.

"We'll be taking Max into town," Eugene explained, lifting Rapunzel off the ground as if she weighed nothing and depositing her on the horse.

"But it's such a beautiful night," Rapunzel remarked, a hint of complaint creeping into her voice. "We should just walk."

"But Max is faster, and we don't want to be late!" Eugene said, jumping up into the saddle behind the princess.

Without another word, they were off.

* * *

The restaurant was noisy and busy, but when Max came to a halt outside the doors, all activity seemed to cease.

"Princess!" cried a skinny maître d, running up to them. He held out his hand to help Rapunzel down from the saddle, and she noticed he had dandruff.

"Thank you," she said, politely, then turned just in time to see Eugene send Max away.

"Oh, he's not going to hang around?" the princess asked, watching the horse disappear into the distance.

"Uh, no, he has...things to do," Eugene muttered, somewhat nervously.

"Things?" Rapunzel prodded.

"Yeah, you know, horse things...oh, look, our table is ready!"

Taking her arm and gently coaxing her over to a table on the restaurant's stone patio, Rapunzel gasped at the view.

As the sun set over the horizon, the sky turned pink and the mountains turned gold.

"Oh, Eugene," the princess breathed, "Look at how beautiful it is!"

Rapunzel turned to look at her boyfriend, to find him staring at her with his chin in his hands and a goofy smile on his face.

"Yeah, the view is pretty beautiful," he said with a pointed look in her direction.

Rapunzel blushed.

Eugene reached across the table and took her hands in his. Rapunzel marveled at how his hands had softened in the two years he'd lived with her at the palace.

"Blondie," Eugene began, slipping back into the nickname he had given her when they'd met. "There's a specific reason I brought you out here tonight."

"There is?" Rapunzel asked, knitting her eyebrows together. "Is something wrong?"

Eugene laughed. "Of course not! In fact, things have never been better. At least for me. How about you?"

Rapunzel contemplated for a moment, looking back out over the now darkening horizon.

"For me...things have been confusing," she finally said.

Her answer caught the former thief off guard.

"In what way?" he asked, tightening his grip on her small hands.

"Well," Rapunzel began, turning back to him. "For starters, two years ago I didn't know anything. Did you know that I once asked mo – Gothel – where babies come from and she told me a large bird brings them in a sack to deserving parents?"

A snort escaped Eugene's throat.

"Really!" Rapunzel exclaimed, but couldn't help the smile creeping across her lips. "And now I know where they really come from, and it's...it's just strange to think about! And not just that, but now I know about politics and religion and dancing..."

"Rapunzel," Eugene interrupted. "Don't take this the wrong way, but...what does this have to do with anything?"

Rapunzel gently pulled her hands away and bit her lower lip, looking down at the table.

"What I mean is...I'm scared for things to change again. I'm happy with the way things are now."

"Ah," Eugene said, understanding donning on him.

Looking down, he reached for the small velvet pouch in his pocket, which contained a ring with a simple pink heart-shaped diamond solitaire.

"So I guess that means you don't want this?"

He laid the pouch on the table, and Rapunzel looked at it like it might bite her.

With a shaking hand, the princess reached out and took the pouch. Pulling the string and gently shaking its contents in her hand, Rapunzel gasped when the ring caught the light from a candle in the center of their table.

The flickering candle light bounced off the facets of the diamond like stars shooting across the sky, and Rapunzel forgot all the reasons why this shouldn't be happening.

Eugene took the opening and ran with it.

He had so many things he wanted to say. Poetic things. Smart things. Suave things.

He wanted to tell her that he chose a heart-shaped diamond because she had stolen his heart. He wanted to tell her that she made him want to be a better man.

Instead, what he said was, "So what do you say, Blondie? Do you wanna marry me, or what?"

Rapunzel slipped the ring onto the third finger of her left hand. It was a perfect fit.

Looking up at her love and smiling, unshed tears springing to her eyes, the princess realized there had only ever been one answer.

"I suppose so."


	2. The Hardest Part of Ending

**THE HARDEST PART OF ENDING**

* * *

_Short scene from up inside the tower before Gothel decides to lure Eugene up and shank him._

* * *

"Rapunzel!"

The girl with the magic hair stopped struggling at the sound of her name.

The woman who had raised Rapunzel for eighteen years had chained her hands behind her back and tied a handkerchief tightly around her mouth, and Rapunzel had been fighting against her ever since. She had no idea where she would go, but she knew she had to get away from the madwoman who was slowly dragging her toward the staircase that would lead them both away from the tower where Rapunzel had lived her entire life, and she would likely never get another chance to escape.

When she heard her name, however, her heart leapt with joy. Because less than an hour earlier, Gothel had told her that the man whose voice she now heard was to be hanged.

But then, as she looked up at Gothel and took in the dark, murderous expression on her face, her heart sank.

"Rapunzel! Let down your hair!"

His voice echoed again through the tower, and Rapunzel wanted nothing more than to go to him and run far away from the raven-haired woman who was now glaring intently at the tower's closed door.

An evil smirk slowly spread across Gothel's face.

"Let's invite him in, shall we?" she said, quickly wrapping Rapunzel's chains around a banister and grabbing the ends of her long blonde hair.

Gothel swung open the doors leading out of the tower, the only doors Rapunzel had ever known of until just that day, and threw Rapunzel's seventy feet of hair down to the man waiting below.

Rapunzel felt his weight tugging on her hair as he climbed, and she watched in horror as Gothel picked up her discarded dagger and hid in the shadows.

Rapunzel tried to scream. Tried to cry out and warn him. But, though she was strong, she was no match for the chains that bound her. And as she watched helplessly, the one person she had most longed to see came into view.

"Rapunzel," she heard him saying, "I thought I'd never see you again..."

Some errant sunlight glinted off the blade of Gothel's dagger...


End file.
